When I was just a wee lass and HubSpot was first starting to make a name for itself, inbound marketing was a brand new idea. Marketers were learning that they couldn't just publish a high volume of content -- it also had to be high-quality and optimized in ways that made it as discoverable as possible through search engines.

And once upon a time, that content was largely limited to the written word. Eleven years later, that's no longer the case -- a comprehensive content strategy includes written work like blogs and ebooks, as well as media like podcasts, visual assets, and videos.That last part -- video -- continues to be on the rise. According to the 2017 State of Inbound, marketers named video as a huge disrupt or. "I mostly write content right now," one respondent said, "but I'm afraid it may begin to diminish more and more with video."Unlock the one resource you need to start growing your YouTube business channel.

And with the rise of other content formats comes the need to optimize them for search. One increasingly important place to do that is on YouTube, which is a video distribution website used by the masses (Hub Spot included).

7 YouTube Search Optimization Tips

1) Title ​

When we search for videos, one of the first things that our eyes are drawn to is the title. That's often what determines whether or not the viewer will click to watch your video, so the title should not only be compelling, but also, clear and concise.​It also helps if the title closely matches what the viewer is searching for. Research conducted found that videos with an exact keyword match in the title have a slight advantage over those that don’t. Here's a linear representation of those findings:​

Source Backlinko

So while "using your target keyword in your title may help you rank for that term," report author Brian Dean explains, "the relationship between keyword-rich video titles and rankings is" weak, at best.​Finally, make sure to keep your title fairly short -- HubSpot Content Strategist Alicia Collins recommends limiting it to 60 characters to help keep it from getting cut off in results pages.

​2) Description

First things first: According to Google, the official character limit for YouTube video descriptions is 1,000 characters. And while it's okay to use all of that space, remember that your viewer most likely came here to watch a video, not to read a story.

If you do choose to write a longer description, keep in mind that YouTube only displays the first two or three lines of text -- that amounts to about 100 characters. After that point, viewers have to click “show more” to see the full description. That's why we suggest front-loading the description with the most important information, like CTAs or crucial links.​

Dean is careful not to encourage ditching an optimized description altogether, though. "An optimized description helps you show up in the suggested videos sidebar," he writes, "which is a significant source of views for most channels."

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3) Tags

YouTube's official Creator Academy suggests using tags to let viewers know what your video is about. But you're not just informing your viewers -- you're also informing YouTube itself. Dean explains that the platform uses tags "to understand the content and context of your video."​That way, YouTube figures out how to associate your video with similar videos, which can broaden your content's reach. But choose your tags wisely. Don't use an irrelevant tag because you think it'll get you more views -- in fact, Google might penalize you for that. And similar to your description, lead with the most important keywords, including a good mix of those that are common and more long-tail (as in, those that answer a question like "how do I?").

4) Category

Once you upload a video, you can categorize it under “Advanced settings.” Choosing a category is another way to group your video with similar content on YouTube.

It might not be as simple as it looks. In fact, YouTube's Creator Academysuggests that marketers go through a comprehensive process to determine which category each video belongs in. It's helpful, the guide writes, "to think about what is working well for each category" you're considering by answering questions like:

Who are the top creators within the category? What are they known for, and what do they do well?

Are there any patterns between the audiences of similar channels within a given category?

Do the videos within a similar category have share qualities like production value, length, or format?

​5) Thumbnail

Your video thumbnail is the main image viewers see when scrolling through a list of video results. Along with the video's title, that thumbnail sends a signal to the viewer about the video's content, so it can impact the number of clicks and views your video receives.​While you can always pick one of the thumbnail options auto-generated by YouTube, we highly recommend uploading a custom thumbnail. The Creator Academy reports that “90% of the best performing videos on YouTube have custom thumbnails,” recommending the use of images that are 1280x720 pixels -- representing a 16:9 ratio -- that are saved as 2MB or smaller .jpg, .gif, .bmp, or .png files. If you follow those parameters, it can help to ensure that your thumbnail appears with equally high quality across multiple viewing platforms.It's important to note that your YouTube account has to be verified in order to upload a custom thumbnail image. To do that, visit youtube.com/verifyand follow the instructions listed there.​

6) SRT Files (Subtitles & Closed Captions)

Like much of the other text we've discussed here, subtitles and closed captions can boost YouTube search optimization by highlighting important keywords.

In order to add subtitles or closed captions to your video, you'll have to upload a supported text transcript or timed subtitles file. For the former, you can also directly enter transcript text for a video so that it auto-syncs with the video.​

Adding subtitles follows a similar process, however, you can limit the amount of text you want displayed. For either, head to your video manager then click on “Videos" under “Video Manager.” Find the video you want to add subtitles or closed captioning to, and click the drop-down arrow next to the edit button. Then, choose “Subtitles/CC.” You can then select how you’d like to add subtitles or closed captioning.

7) Cards and End Screens

When you're watching a video, have you ever seen a small white, circular icon with an "i" in the center appear in the corner, or a translucent bar of text asking you to subscribe? Those are Cards, which Creator Academydescribes as "preformatted notifications that appear on desktop and mobile which you can set up to promote your brand and other videos on your channel."​

You can add up to five cards to a single video, and there are six types:

Channel cards that direct viewers to another channel.

Donation cards to encourage fundraising on behalf of U.S. nonprofit organizations.

Fan funding to ask your viewers to help support the creation of your video content.

Poll cards, which pose a question to viewers and allow them to vote for a response.

Video or playlist cards, which link to other YouTube content of this kind.

​For detailed steps on adding a card to your video, follow these official steps from Google

End Screens

End screens display similar information as cards, but as you may have guessed, they don't display until a video is over, and are a bit more visually detailed in nature. A good example is the overlay with a book image and a visual link to view more on the video below:

There are a number of detailed instructions for adding end screens depending on what kind of platform you want to design them for, as well as different types of content allowed for them by YouTube. Google outlines the details for how to optimize for all of those considerations here.

It's important to note that YouTube is always testing end screens to try to optimize the viewer experience, so there are times when "your end screen, as designated by you, may not appear." Take these factors into account as you decide between using either cards or end screens.

Learning how to write SEO friendly blog posts is a skill that can be learned fairly quickly

Obviously you need to be a good writer to begin with and be able to present your information in a way that makes it easy for your audience to understand. Using formatting such as headings, sub-headings, bullet points, and short paragraphs help to make your content easy to digest.When you create content that your audience understands and receives value from they are more likely to share it on social media, which helps to introduce your content and brand to a whole new audience. Think about it for a minute — create great content and people will be willing to promote it for your for free. This can result in more inbound links and increased rankings in the organic search results.Writing blog content for your blog requires that you understand how to create content that will engage your audience as well as gel with the search engines. Now, a lot of people take this the wrong way and stuff their blog content full of keywords and it really ruins the readability and quality of the content. There is a way to make your content search engine optimization friendly while still keeping 100% of your focus on creating content that provides a value to your reader.

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Use the following 10 tips to create awesome blog content that your readers will love while still keeping it SEO friendly in the process. Natural writers are able to just sit down are the ideas flow, creating a great piece of content. Others often need some help and guidance, so use these following tips if you fall into that category.

1. Determine What Your Post Will Solve You will want to first think of what your blog post is going to help solve. What is the purpose of the content — are you solving a problem or providing help? You also have to establish what your goal is, conversion wise, for the post. Do you want to direct your reader to another page on your website after they read the content? Are you trying to get them to make a purchase on your website? Are you trying to convert them into a lead? You must identify this before you even start writing.

2. Create an Outline Before you start typing away you need to make sure that you have a nice outline laid out and ready to follow. This is where you address the key points, which will be your headings, sub-headings, and bullet points. Once you have this all structured you basically just have to fill in each section. This not only helps you create content faster, but it ensures your blog post has correct structure before you start.

3. Break Up Your Content Break up your content into small paragraphs that are easy to absorb. Long and drawn out paragraphs are difficult to read for some and you will lose their interest. Small pieces of information perform much better and it is also more visually appealing. Each paragraph should have a main point, which you address.

4. Use Descriptive Headings and sub-headings are a great way to address key points and introduce new pieces of information, but they also serve another purpose. Many of your website visitors aren’t going to read every word in a blog post. They will skim through it quickly and if your headings and sub-headings are descriptive they will understand your post and the point you are attempting to make even if they just skim through it.

5. Proof Read. & Then Proof Read Again Before you publish your content you need to proof read it. You should also have two to three other people read it to make sure that they understand the main point of the post. Having someone else proof your content will also help point out any grammatical errors that you overlooked. It is always a good idea to get a couple of sets of eyes on it before putting it out there for the world to see.6. Don’t Keyword Stuff Back in the day most blog content was created around a formula of inserting the target keyword into the content a specific number of times. It was referred to as keyword density and depending on whom you talked to that number ranged from 2-5%. Now, if you use your keyword in the heading and place it within the content a couple of times you are fine. Now, this is only if it makes sense and can be used without ruining the quality of your post.

7. Install WordPress SEO There are several SEO plugins that can help you craft your posts in a SEO friendly manner. Personally, we recommend WordPress SEO because it is very thorough and simple to use. Remember that these plugins will just help you with some basic SEO and make suggestions accordingly. They aren’t the answer to all of your ranking questions, but they do provide some nice guidance, especially those new to SEO.

SEO is always evolving and the “old” way of creating content will slap your website with a Google penalty. High quality content that your readers see a value in will receive more Facebook likes and shares, Twitter tweets, and repeat visitors. Use the tips mentioned to make your content more SEO friendly, but remember to always focus on publishing great content.

​There are some great free fonts out there. Here are the best of the best.In this freshly updated free fonts for designers post, we bring you the world's best free fonts. We've filtered out the jewels from the thousands of less perfectly designed free fonts available online, so you can use them in your designs and illustrations.

This list represents the very best free fonts we've found, split into eight categories. You can use the drop-down menu at the top of the page, or the boxout, right, to jump to the section you want.Don't forget, we have many other articles covering specialist font types including handwriting fonts, kids' fonts, cursive fonts, beautiful fonts, web fonts, professional fonts and more.Most of the typeface collections listed here can be used in your projects for free, but please be sure to check the terms. Read on for our pick of the best free fonts, which you can download and use today.​

Sans-serif fonts tend to work better for screen use, but this free slab serif typeface has been specially designed to provide a comfortable reading experience on screens. Bitter was designed by Sol Matas, and is available through Argentinian type collaborative Huerta Tipográfica. It combines generous x-heights with minimal variation in stroke weight.

This free serif display font takes inspiration from the late 18th century European Enlightenment and the work of type designer John Baskerville. The high-contract letterforms have delicate hairlines, relating to the rise in popularity of pointed steel pens, which took over from the previous broad nib quills during this period.

Lora is a free font that has its roots in calligraphy. It was originally designed for type foundry Cyreal in 2011, with a Cyrillic extension added in 2013, and comes in four styles: regular, bold, italic, and bold italic. Brushed curves contrast with driving serifs to give this free font a well-balanced, contemporary feel. Although Lora is technically optimised for use on the web, it also works well in print projects.

​Inspired by both Dala Floda and the Bodoni family, Butler is a free font designed by Fabian De Smet. His aim was to bring a bit of modernism to serif fonts by working on the curves of classical serif fonts, and adding an extra stencil family.The Butler family contains 334 characters, seven regular weights and seven stencil weights, and includes text figures, ligatures and fractions. It also suits many different languages with its added glyphs. De Smet suggests it would work well for “posters, very big titles, books and fancy stuff.”

Arvo is a geometric slab-serif font family that’s suitable for both screen and print use. Designed for legibility, it was created by Anton Koovit and published in the Google Font directory as a free open font (OFL). Unlike many slab serifs on Google Fonts, Arvo contains normal, italic, bold and bold italic styles.

Here’s a free font family created specifically for book production, inspired by old-time, Garamond-esque book typefaces. Crimson Text is the work of German-born, Toronto-based designer Sebastian Kosch, who says he was influenced by the work of Jan Tschichold, Robert Slimbach and Jonathan Hoefler. It’s also favorite free font of Taylor Palmer, a senior UX designer based in Utah, USA. "Crimson is a sophisticated serif that makes a nice alternative to traditional Garamond-esque typefaces,” he says. “It also has a very expressive italic, which pairs nicely with strong, geometric sans-serifs like Futura or Avenir."

Aleo has semi-rounded details and a sleek structure, giving a sense of personality while maintaining a good level of legibility. This free font family comprises six styles: three weights (light, regular and bold), with corresponding true italics. Released under the SIL Open Font License, it was designed by Alessio Laiso, a designer at IBM Dublin, as the slab serif companion to Lato.

​Neuton is a fuss-free font with a large height and short extenders. Its compact width means it works well on screens. The designer, Brian Zick, compares his font to Times New Roman, stating that it can be useful for formal or work documents, and is particularly good for italics.​09. Brela​

Free font Brela works well in editorial designs, both for headlines and body text

Brela is a humanistic serif font designed exclusively for editorial design. With a generous x-height, it’s very legible, even at tiny sizes, yet it works equally well in bold, large headlines. This free font was designed by Spanish creative agency Makarska Studio and comes in regular and bold weights.

​Libre Baskerville is a web font optimised for body text (typically 16px). It’s based on the American Type Founder's Baskerville from 1941, but it has a taller x-height, wider counters and a little less contrast, allowing it to work well for reading on screen. This open source project is led by Impallari Type, a type design foundry based in Rosario, Argentina. "I like to keep my eye on the Libre fonts, like Libre Baskerville,” enthuses Taylor Palmer, a senior UX designer based out of Utah, USA. He also recommends you check out its sister font, Libre Franklin, which is also free. “Libre Franklin hearkens back to strong, traditional typefaces, like Franklin Gothic, that have the declarative nature of something like a newspaper headline but are simple enough to set as paragraph text," he explains.

A remarkably elegant font, Jura is characterised by its narrow proportions and distinguishing details, including its rounded, wedge shaped serifs. It looks good at large sizes, but reads well at small ones too. This free font was created by UK-based designer Ed Merritt.​

​Fénix is a calligraphy-inspired font that works well as both display text and body copy. Featuring strong serifs and rough strokes, it provides a lovely rhythm when reading long passages in small text sizes. It’s the work of Fernando Díaz, a designer at Uruguayan foundry TipoType.

Luthier is a contemporary typeface characterised by sharp serifs and high contrast, which comes in two weights plus italics. Good for both headlines and body text, it would suit designs focused on serious, intellectual topics. This free font was created by Barcelona-based designer Adrià Gómez.

Currently the number one most popular serif font on Google Fonts, Slabo was designed by John Hudson, co-founder of Tiro Typeworks foundry. Slabo is a growing collection of size-specific web fonts, with Slabo 27px and Slabo 13px out so far, fine-tuned precisely for use at those specific pixel sizes. The blocky feel of its ligatures give a modern twist to the serif font, perfect for online designs.

Created by indie type foundry TypeTogether, Bree Serif is the free serif cousin of the paid-for font family, Bree. Described as a "friendly upright italic", Bree Serif is modern and has an easy-to-read face when used at larger point sizes. Its rounded 'a' with a single counter is a nice touch, too.

A truly open source free serif font, Merriweather has its own project on GitHub. It was designed by Sorkin Type to be easy to read on screens, particularly. "It features a very large x-height, slightly condensed letterforms, a mild diagonal stress, sturdy serifs and open forms," it says.

Geometric sans serif typeface Alcubierre is the work of designer Matt Ellis. Following in the footsteps of his original free font Ikaros, this clean, minimal typeface works for a variety of uses. Ellis is super generous too, offering both designs to all totally free for both personal and commercial use. ​

Moon is a rounded, sans-serif font that comes in three weights and has recently been updated to include a lowercase. It's the work of designer Jack Harvatt, who has made it available to download on his Behance page. Moon is free for personal projects, but if you want to use it commercially you'll need to shell out for a licence.

Big John was created by designer Ion Lucin for his personal use. Eventually, he decided to share it on Behance, and then went on to add an ultra-light sister font: Slim Joe. Both are all-caps fonts, and contrast perfectly when combined together. These fonts are ideal for titles and headlines, and can be downloaded for free on Behance.

Raleway is a free, neo-groesque inspired, sans-serif typeface. It was designed by Matt McInterney (who previously worked at Pentagram) and is available in a single, thin weight. This display typeface includes standard and discretionary ligatures, a good set of diacritics, and both old style and lining numerals. Fans of the font can also experiment with a more geometric-inspired alternate.

Designed with wayfinding signage in mind, and equally suitable for user interfaces or anything that requires legibility from an angle, Aganè is a clean sans-serif from Swiss graphic, UI and type designer Danilo De Marco. Free for personal and commercial use, Aganè was inspired by Noorda Font by Bob Noorda, FF Transit by Erik Spiekermann, and Frutiger by Adrian Frutiger.

For a free font, Titillium has a highly respectable pedigree, born of a type design project at Italy’s Accademia di Belle Arti di Urbino. Each academic year, a dozen students work on the project, developing it further and solving problems, and they ask all graphic designers who use Titillium in their projects to email them some examples of the typeface family in use, to help them develop it further.“Titillium has been a favourite font of mine for a few years now,” says Rob Hampson, head of design at The Bot Platform, a new platform for building bots on Messenger. “It’s sharp, contemporary and comes in a wide range of weights. In my opinion, it works best in larger sizes; for example, for titles. That said, with careful consideration, it could be used as a body font.”

League Gothic is a condensed sans-serif inspired by the classic typeface Alternate Gothic #1, originally designed by Morris Fuller Benton for the American Type Founders Company in 1903. The League of Movable Type decided to make its own version and, as ever, open source it, with contributions from Micah Rich, Tyler Finck and Dannci.

Chivo is a grotesque typeface that’s ideal for headlines, and other page furniture where you want to grab attention. Both confident and elegant, it’s been released in four weights with matching italics. This free font is the work of Héctor Gattiand the Omnibus-Type Team.​

AdvertisementComfortaa is a rounded geometric sans-serif type design intended for large sizes. Created by Johan Aakerlund, a design engineer at the Technical University of Denmark, it’s a simple, good looking font that includes large number of different characters and symbols. Part of the Google Font Improvements Project, the latest updates to the family include the addition of a Cyrillic character set and support for Vietnamese. David Airey, a graphic designer and occasional writer in Northern Ireland, is among its admirers. “A lot of free fonts need too much work cleaning up the points, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find good options,” he says. “For a recent identity project, I used Comfortaa as the base for a bespoke wordmark. The before and after are really quite different, but Johan’s work gave me a great foundation, and the client loves the result.”

Noto Sans is a free font family designed by Google supporting more than 100 writing systems, 800 languages, and hundreds of thousands of characters. Noto fonts are intended to be visually harmonious across multiple languages, with compatible heights and stroke thicknesses. The family include regular, bold, italic and bold italic styles, and is hinted. It is derived from Droid, and like Droid it has a serif sister family, Noto Serif.​

HK Grotesk is a sans-serif typeface inspired by the classic grotesques, such as Akzidenz Grotesk, Univers, Trade Gothic and Gill Sans. It was designed by Hanken Design Co with the aim of creating a friendly and distinguishable font that’s suitable for small text. It has recently expanded its language support with the addition of Cyrillic characters (Bulgarian, Russian and Serbian).

​Aileron is a versatile, neo-grotesque sans-serif that’s somewhere between Helvetica and Univers. Created by Sora Sagano, a designer at Tipotype, it aims to provide readers with a high level of visual comfort. It’s available in 16 weights, from ultralight to black.

This free font has been specially created to complement the tone of voice of Ubuntu, the Linux operating system for personal computers, tablets and smartphones. Designed by font foundry Dalton Maag, it uses OpenType features and is manually hinted for clarity on desktop and mobile screens.

Clear Sans is a versatile font designed by Intel designed with on-screen legibility in mind. Suitable for screen, print, and web, this free font is notable for its minimised characters and slightly narrow proportions, making it a great choice for UI design, from short labels to long passages (it has, for instance, been adopted by Mozilla for the ‘Firefox for Android’ browser). Created by Daniel Ratighan at Monotype under the direction of Intel, Clear Sans supports a wide range of languages using Latin, Cyrillic and Greek, and includes medium, regular, thin, and light weights with upright, italic, and bold styles.

Released in 2012, Source Sans Pro was the first open source type family for Adobe, and has proved wildly popular. It was envisioned as a classic grotesque typeface with a simple, unassuming design, intended to work well in user interfaces. It was designed by Paul D. Hunt, who continues to work as a type designer at Adobe, and also designed the complementary free font Source Serif Pro.Source Sans Pro is one of the favourite free fonts of James Hollingworth, a senior-level digital designer and illustrator based near Bath, UK. “It’s such a solid, reliable font to use in design work,” he enthuses. “Being dyslexic myself, I find it a very easy font to read, and it works brilliantly in user interfaces.” You might also like the fonts in our 20 fonts every graphic designer should ownpost or even our 15 fantastic logo fonts post.

This bold handwriting font was inspired by the slanting letterforms found in typical Tamal handwriting (as well as a Tamil alphabet, it also includes Latin letterforms). Kavivanar was designed by Tharique Azeez, a type designer based in Sri Lanka, and is free to download.

Amatic is a small-caps, hand-drawn web font that is ideal for titles or small runs of text. It has gained popularity for its naive aesthetic, which is brimming with personality. The free font was first designed by Vernon Adams, before being refreshed and revised by Ben Nathan and Thomas Jockin. It is currently features on over 2,400,000 websites.

Nickainley is one of our favourite free handwriting fonts. This Monoline script with a classic, vintage feel, includes uppercase and lowercase characters, as well as numeric s and punctuation marks. Offering a variety of possible use cases, including logos, T-shirt designs, letterhead and signage, this free font was created by Indonesian agency Seniors Studio.

Shadows Into Light is the work of type designer Kimberly Geswein. Ideal for adding a personal touch to your projects, this free font features rounded edges and neat, clean characters. It's currently available in one style only, but has already proven extremely popular.

Pacifico is a fun brush script handwriting font inspired by 1950s American surf culture. This open source font was one of the great contributions to the free software community by the late designer Vernon Adams, who passed away last year.​37. Cute Punk

Cute Punk offers a vibrant, youthful and thoroughly modern take on the handwriting font. Infusing the style with a striking, almost geometric feel, this free font is the work of Flou, a designer and illustrator from Bratislava, Slovakia.

An idiosyncratic take on the handwriting font, Futuracha is inspired by John Baskerville’s classic typefaces, as well as Futura Book. Created by Holy, this free font family includes numerics, symbol fonts, and Greek and Latin characters. Designed as a display font, Futuracha could work well when used creatively in headlines, logos or typographical illustrations.

Yellow tail is an old-school, flat, brush font that evokes classic 1930s typefaces like Gillies Gothic and Kaufman. Designed by typography institute Astigmatic, its mixture of connecting and non-connecting letter forms gives it a unique look and ensures good legibility. You might also like the fonts in our 50 great free handwriting fonts post, our 14 calligraphy fonts post or our 10 pretty fonts post.

​With so much potential for businesses – both small and large, you cannot afford to ignore social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google+ for promoting your brand and products. What makes the social network so valuable is that there’s no need to spend a fortune on these sites to be able to reach your audience.

A simple profile page and regular updates may be all that is required to succeed. Here are some basic tips on how to go about with a successful strategy for your social media presence.

1. Sign Up and Create a Profile

Make sure that your company name or brand name is on all the top social networks. For starters, check these off your list:

Facebook

Twitter

Google+

LinkedIn

Creating a profile on these sites is free, easy and fast. Maintaining the profile however, is something that is not easy – and the reason why many businesses fail to continue with their social media strategy.

2. Hire a Social Media Manager

Managing a social account successfully requires the investment of time and effort. You will need to make friends and/or build new followers (and grow your network), post content regularly; respond to comments and complaints, and a whole lot of other things.Rather than do all this yourself, hire the services of an experienced and skilled social media manager. A person fully invested in looking after your business’s social presence on line will better enable you to build an active social profile that is less prone to error, more responsive to trending topics, and quicker to respond and connect to your social audience.​If you’re on a tighter budget, there are also social media management tools that could automate your tasks and help you save time and money.

3. Be where your audience is

While the above-mentioned four social sites are a must-have when it comes to stamping your online presence, you should also conduct research to learn where your target audience spends more of its time.​Depending on your products or niche, chances are that your potential customers prefer Instagram to Facebook. Maybe they like to spend more time tweeting or on YouTube watching and sharing videos. Get to know your potential and existing customers’ social maps, and make sure they can find you wherever they happen to be.

4. Consistency is the biggest factor to social media success

Many businesses will create their social media accounts and leave it at that. A social media prescence is not just about having a stagnant Facebook page. If you are not consistently looking after your social platforms, you could be doing more harm than good to your brand image.If you have a social media manager, make sure there is also a social media plan for success. It should include regular updates and user interaction as an important part of the strategy. The most successful brands build their social media calendar. (In fact, they will have a calendar for all their online activities).When thinking of your online media strategy, stick to the rules of integrated marketing coordination. It could help you get the most out of your overall marketing plan.Social media is all about building relationships. So make sure that you are always building positive relations and giving out better ​experiences to your audience. If you are successful in doing so, they are highly likely to pay back in different ways.

​Logos are a part of your brand identity. Most people would identify you and your brand by your logo design, rather than your company name. That because most people tend to remember an image more easily than a name. You need to make sure that you’ve got your logo design right to grab the attention of your customers.You need to make sure that your prospects are intrigued and curious about your logo and for that you need the right logo design. There are some business owners who just don’t understand the value of a well-designed logo. They assume that they can cut corners here. However, if you do that, you’ll end up regretting it later. Here’s what you need to do.

Don’t Do Bland and Normal

​The purpose of a logo is to stand out amongst the crowd. You can’t do that if your logo is generic and doesn’t attract attention. There are several free logo generators online, but they wouldn’t offer you the same level of design and sophistication that a custom logo would. A designer would carefully consider your brand, your company, your product, and your target audience before they design a new logo for you. They will make a concerted effort to create something that’s great to look at and memorable.That’s exactly what you need if you want to build a brand image. After all, how can you do that if you have a forgettable logo? So, spending some time and money on creating the right logo is a good thing. It would ensure that you get the best results possible from your efforts.

Typography

Have you noticed how different fonts seem to convey different messages? Yes, there are neutral fronts like Calibri or Ariel but there are fonts that convey a meaning. For example, the Comic Sans font looks playful and casual. Gothic fonts are serious and elegant. There are fonts that offer a retro look or an edgy look, etc.Experienced logo designers will use these fonts to convey the right message through your logo. They will make sure that your logo attracts the attention of the right kinds of audience. For example, if you’re a business that overhauls cars and bikes, you might use an edgy, masculine font in your logo design. That would connect with the most likely customers of your business. Like logo design, font or typography also matters.

Colours

Colours convey messages as well. Black and white are neutral and elegant, pinks, pastels, purples appear feminine but dark greys, blues, browns, etc appear masculine and tough. Depending on the kind of customers your company sells to, choose a different colour and style. You can consult a professional about which colour suits your company the best. They would recommend something that would attract customers immediately and create the right vibe in your website and your store.When you’re creating a logo, you need to ensure that the design is consistent everywhere. This means that you will have a uniform theme that would appeal to your customers.

​We live in a world where communication is lightening fast and information is at everyone’s fingertips. Most companies are scrambling to ensure that their reputation is well-maintained and their customers are saying good things about them. They are more focused on customers that leave behind negative reviews than the customers who support their brand and like their product.

You shouldn’t underestimate the power of this support. If you have a sizable customer base with people who are willing to communicate with you, you should utilize this opportunity. There are several ways to use the support of your customers to increase your visibility in the market. If you go about this the right way, you’ll get a wider customer base and generate more revenue. Here’s what you need to do:

Build a Relationship

​If you want people in your corner, you need to build a good relationship with them. You can do that by communicating with them regularly. You can engage them on social media and send them regular newsletters to ensure that they become familiar with your company and your content. Building a positive relationship with your customers takes time and patience, but it can offer great rewards. A good relationship with your customers will ensure that they’re in your corner and will help you get more visibility.

Start Working on the Content

​Once you’ve established a good relationship with your customers, you need to start focusing on the content. It’s not a good idea to post just anything that comes to your mind. You content needs to be impressive, informative, and well-written. You want to create something that would go viral and be distributed amongst different social media channels. To do that, you’ll have to spend some time creating good content.

​If you post good content on a regular basis, your customers and followers will start sharing it amongst their connections. If you’re fortunate, you’ll create a piece that goes viral. This would drastically increase your visibility. Your customers will spread your name and influence everywhere by sharing your content. This only works if the content is excellent.

Ask them to Generate Content

Your customers can generate content as well. In fact, your campaign will be much more effective if they do. The opinion or a review of your customers will have a powerful sway over your prospects. You should encourage your supporters to voice their approval of their product and services on social media and other such channels. There are several kinds of customer generated content. Some of them are listed here:

Reviews and testimonials are the most powerful types of customer content. A significant portion of your prospective customers would make the buying decision based on customer reviews.

You can hold contests where you can ask your customers to take photographs or shot videos as they experience your product. You can choose different kinds of themes. You don’t really need to focus on the product. The intention is to generate interest and catch attention.

You can easily utilize the support of your customers to get the visibility you need. They’re an untapped resource that you shouldn’t ignore.

​Sometimes you see a car crash campaign and think, how on earth was this ever okayed? Branding mistakes are ten-a-penny in the world of business, and they tend to be more prevalent when companies are trying to market their product or business internationally.

​Creating a successful brand that’s known the world over is the goal of most businesses. Recognising the Uber logo in Beirut, or the McDonald’s golden arch in Nepal means your brand has globalised and, by virtue of being well-known, appears to be a dependable option.

Some of the world’s biggest branding mistakes have had costly and damaging consequences. The business becomes known as the joke brand, and one thing that’s hardest to then re-influence is consumer memory.

Take Clairol’s launch of their curling hair product in Germany, the mist-stick. German speakers among you will know that mist is German for manure. So, thanks to some poor branding decisions, Clairol was trying to sell a poo-stick to consumers, which doesn’t get anyone’s heart a-thumpin’. There have been many examples of failed marketing as products have tried to branch out to China - when Mercedes Benz launched in China they did so under the name, Bensi. In China, that means ‘rush to die’ which isn’t ideal when you’re trying to market a fast car.

My favourite? The American Dairy Association translated its famous ‘Got Milk’ campaign into Spanish, which was translated and marketed as “Are you lactating?” If enormous brands make these mistakes, then small businesses and entrepreneurs must be doomed. Right?

The reality is big business can be stubborn and unswayed by their confidence and cockiness. They have all the marketing guys, and all the budget - it seems crazy that they’d make such big mistakes. But when larger companies can be more careless, SMEs really can’t afford to be.

Before working out the branding for your product, try looking at it with your blinkers off, with fresh eyes. Does your logo look like genitalia for example, as Airbnb’s was purported to? Does it look similar to anyone else’s logo, font, or brand name? If so, beware copyright law. Tagline, marketing design, the logo, and other visual branding can work to make or break the brand.

As David Ogilvy, the proclaimed father of modern advertising, once said, "It’s useless to be a creative, original, thinker, unless you can also sell what you create."

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Jade Sarkhel, PR and brand manager at Charlotte’s Group, advises SMEs to start with how you would like people to feel when they interact with your brand. "What kind of ‘person’ would your brand be. As an example when developing the Charlotte’s Group Brand we wanted people to feel inspired, motivated, influenced, trusting, like there are opportunities, positive. Then, based on these “feelings” you think about colours, shapes, textures, fonts that trigger those feelings and emotions and what well-known brands out there are already associated with those words."

Making sure your product is better than others on the market doesn’t matter a jot if you can’t get your branding right. The Pontiac Vibe and the Toyota Matrix were exactly the same car, except the Pontiac Vibe was cheaper - yet, which car do you think was most successful? The Pontiac stopped retailing in 2010, as Toyota continued to steamroller through the low to midrange automobile market. This is because of brand trust and recognition, something that cannot be underestimated by SMEs.

It’s equally as important to focus to the type of language used when marketing your brand. Previous examples showed that poor translation is often to blame for marketing fails, but what about when the brand completely fails to take recent events into consideration? In 2014, Malaysia Airlines was hit by two of the worst aviation disasters in recent history. Yet, they still thought it was completely appropriate to bring out an advertising campaign called “my ultimate bucket list competition”. It invited an enormous amount of anger from people who thought it was completely insensitive, seeing as bucket list is normally associated with things you do before you die.

Paying attention to current events, current feeling, and current political emotions can help not only avoid painfully awkward campaigns, but also can help brands succeed and get noticed. For example, let’s take Walmart’s horrendous faux-pas when they advertised “Fat girl Halloween costumes”, which were basically outfits for the larger lady. If they’d been paying any attention at all to the current climate whoever did the content for the website would have realised such blatant descriptions are not on in our “body proud, feminist arena”. Times have changed. You’d no more call a girl fat, than use a derogatory word to describe somebody’s skin colour or sexual orientation.

When branding your company, whether you’re doing that digitally through a social media campaign, or physically, using a logo, understanding why brands in the past have failed is crucial.

For many, a logo is the brand. It is instantly recognizable, it is catchy in the same way a good song is, and it could be easily drawn.​​

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Consumers see the golden arches of McDonalds and they think of fast food. There must be very few people in the world who could not identify the logo of Apple, or of Starbucks. Having a logo is symbolic, but is it the be-all, end-all of having a successful, workable brand?

From identifying those logos, what else do you understand about these brands? Could you say anything more than ‘they like bright colours’ or, ‘there is a woman with lots of hair drinking coffee?’

​Many SMEs get stuck on needing to design an impactful logo, but, with the advent of social media, having a strong and effective brand is just as important as a nice picture.

How many of you could immediately draw the logo for British Airways? Or for Singapore Airlines? Yet we know they are trusted and respected brands - they have managed this without having a hugely identifiable logo.​

​Jo Evans, senior design manager at Spreckley, a PR agency, feels a logo is still important for businesses as it appears on multiple platforms. Therefore, even though social media might be king, your logo will still be visible, and in fact, will probably be the most mobile friendly aspect. There won’t be room for your name or slogan on a Twitter profile, so to maximise different platforms, a logo is important.​"Your logo is the first thing people notice about you and you want it to set the right mood and create the right initial impression and so, personality is everything. Your brand may appear on a few platforms from print to digital, large or small, so changing it if it’s not working is added expense, time and hassle. Style, layout and colors will need to flow throughout your identity so you’ll need to think beyond just a logo and experienced designers can do this for you."

Something that lets many companies down who have decided to invest in new branding or a logo, is doing it on the cheap. Strong design across the whole brand is important, and many business people assume it’s just an added bit tacked on at the end. A strong brand design may cost you more than quickly fiddling around online, but it is worth the extra investment.

Deciding whether you want a logo at all, or just an iconic lettered heading are important. Both Google and Amazon use ‘word logos’ while Apple and Starbucks have emblem ones. One key move by brands is removing words from logos - Starbucks, Ink, and Gap, among others. Yet, it’s important to remember that a logo is just part of a brand. But it’s also one that can make your brand more standout and more memorable, essential if you have close competitors.

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Companies spend an extraordinary amount of time and money trying to create an iconic logo. Back in 2010, British Oil firm BP spent £136million pounds on redesigning their logo - that was for its sunflower design. The secret is to go for a logo that embodies what your company stands for. In 2010, BP caused an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that destroyed an enormous amount of nature and cost £46bn, which is possibly one of the reasons they were looking for a redesign.

Their sunflower image is about as far from an image you’d associate with an oil company, as it’s possible to be. It suggests a commitment to nature and to the environment. BP were left red-faced after the spill, so were keen to remind customers about their pledge to be more caring towards the environment.

With the BP case in point, the importance of a logo must not be overestimated. If you have a restricted budget, lay down your tools, stop scratching your head waiting for that elusive design to reveal itself, and focus on making the brand trustworthy. That, more than anything else, is what people will look for, not a symbol. The logo will come, once your brand has developed a story, and a true following.

​Funny campaign slogans 9 Teamwork slogans and funny campaign slogans to promote team spirit in the workplace.The one common denominator which can be applied to all companies is that every single one starts out in order to reach some level of achievement. (Also see top 100 slogans)

Team spirit slogans with regard to achievement is:

1. "The moment you commit yourself is the moment your goal is assured."2. “Together we can.”3. “Together we can do more.”4. “Teamwork divides the task and doubles the success.”5. “Work together for success.”6. “Coming together, sharing together, working together, succeeding together.”7. There is no "I" in "teamwork."8. "We may be strong as individuals - but as a team we are invincible."9. "Whether we play a large or small role, by working together we achieve our objectives."

You could incorporate some motivational slogans and create some of your own slogans​in order to motivate your staff.

Make posters of some of the motivational slogans and teamwork slogans and hang it all over your office in order to create the atmosphere for a positive and motivating working environment. Brand these posters with the campaign message if it is part of a bigger workplace communication campaign.

Use teamwork slogans to inspirational teamwork quotes to come up with clever team names.

Create Amusing Team Names

All sports teams have one thing in common, and that is that they all have different names. Their names become their identity, and if you are trying to create a cohesive team in your office one of the best things that you can do is to create some amusing team names for your staff. Not only will they have fun with the new names, but it will also help to spur on a little healthy competition. The only real question is how do you come up with some great team names?

1. Associate all the team names and team slogans together in some way. For example, say you work for a company that creates products for animals. In that case maybe you want to choose names that have do to with the different animals that you serve. Or perhaps you want to label your teams by the geographic areas that they serve. Try to find something for the team name that ties into what your teams already do.

2. Adjectives can always help to make a team name more amusing. For example, you don't often see teams simply named The Cats. However, it is quite common to see teams called The Wild Cats. Use adjectives that help to personify the personality of your team.

3. Alliteration can also be a lot of fun for team names. Alliteration is when each word starts with the same constant sound or sound group. For example, say your team wants to be called The Broncos. Rather than simply leaving it at that you might want to go by the Bold Bucking Broncos. That way you can even refer to yourselves as the triple B's.

4. Another fun thing to try when looking for amusing team names is to integrate your supervisor in the name. While the All Star team may be just that, by adjusting the team name to Jim's All Stars you give yourself a leader and something to belong to.